Elsbeth review: Carrie Preston shines in a kooky twist on the network procedural

Spinoffs are tricky. But if there’s a pair of creators with experience doing them within the landscape of 21st century American television, it’s Robert and Michelle King. The two, after all, successfully ushered the world of the ambitious network drama The Good Wife into the form-defying streaming spinoff The Good Fight. And now the Good-verse is further branching out with arguably one of broadcast television’s most intriguing prospects: Elsbeth, which premieres February 29, a show that has all the trappings of a weekly CBS procedural wrapped in a kooky sensibility that feels in short supply in the post-Peak TV era.

Fans of those Julianne Margulies and Christine Baranski-fronted series will be familiar with Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston), an intuitive legal thinker who, as we witness in almost every single scene in her eponymous new show, always has to carry around a trio of tote bags—all the better to bumble her way into spaces and conversations that would otherwise exclude her. Elsbeth, we learn, has left Chicago behind and now finds herself working with the NYPD as part of a consent decree wherein Big Apple police have agreed to have Ms. Tascioni oversee their investigations so as to (further) avoid lawsuits by adhering to the word of the law.

If that sounds like a bit of needless plotting, don’t worry: Elsbeth is self-aware enough to point out how little anyone knows what it is the Chicago transplant is doing as she meddles, week in and week out, into murder investigations in New York City that, despite looking like open-and-shut cases, turn out to be intricately more challenging. That is to say: Every time Elsbeth arrives at a crime scene, she’s quick to find irregularities that work against the seemingly obvious rulings cops and detectives would make in haste to get them solved.

In this way, Elsbeth operates a bit like a modern-day Murder She Wrote. Preston’s quirky lawyer turned NYPD overseer is constantly stumbling onto murders only she, with her off-kilter demeanor and quirky M.O., can solve. Time and time again, Elsbeth’s ingenuity and persistence (no matter how annoying or off-putting others may find it) wins out in the end, with her hunches—gathered from a Sherlock-ian attention to detail—constantly pushing her toward making discoveries the NYPD would otherwise have missed.

A show like this one lives or dies on the strength of its protagonist. Thankfully, the way the Kings have further shaped Elsbeth so she can finally be the focus is nothing short of miraculous. Rather than bend her into becoming a main character, what they’ve done (with Preston’s help) is make this quintessentially supporting character take center stage; this is the Elsbeth Tascioni The Good Wife fans all know and love. She’s just now been given room to breathe and grow as she tries to figure out whether she can have it all in the Big Apple. Preston, who won an Emmy for playing Elsbeth back in 2013, is clearly relishing the chance to revisit this most cloyingly charming character and making her aggressively warm eclectic energy work against the strictures of the more neurotically minded world of New York City. Preston is able to make it clear that Elsbeth is a woman whose mind is swirling a mile a minute even as her patient, dry demeanor may suggest she’s often moving at half-speed. It’s a tightrope to walk, and Preston makes it all look effortless, as she’s done in a long career full of offbeat characters.

When Elsbeth Tascioni enters a room (or a scene, even), she does so askew. She appears out of unsuspecting corners, her head popping out sideways from walls and doors alike. At one point, she even jumps into view from behind a crowd of New Yorkers gawking at a crime scene. The way Carrie Preston plays her, Elsbeth is the kind of fish out of water character who wears such a moniker with unsuspecting pride. We first meet her touring Manhattan’s streets with a Statue of Liberty foam crown, unwaveringly sunny and earnest. She’s not embarrassed by her whims and desires; she dresses loudly (in pinks and reds and yellows and greens), pushing back against the idea that to be taken seriously you need to dress seriously. I mean, take her name: What kind of name is “Elsbeth” anyway?

But Elsbeth is keen enough to know how to play into this: She goads everyone around her to discount her so that a phone call, a meeting, or a run-in later, she can better test her many wild theories about why that suicide scene in that posh apartment really looks more like a murder, why that accident on the balcony looks more like a premeditated incident, and why that reality TV show death looks more like the result of a star-studded vendetta. And, from the first three episodes, it’s obvious this case-of-the-week structure is going to work wonders—especially if the Kings keep up their knack for ace guest stars. Elsbeth’s first three episodes alone feature Jane Krakowski (as a ruthless real estate agent), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (as a reality TV exec), and Linda Lavin (as an insufferable Manhattanite).

And therein lies what makes Elsbeth such a joy to watch. Episode in and episode out, you witness cops, detectives, witnesses, and possible suspects continually underestimate her. They all look at her, with her wide-eyed grin and her knitted mittens (or various totes, or colorful skirts, or placid pleasantries), and they assume she’s no match for them, that she’s no one worth paying attention to. That’s what Wendell Pierce’s captain C.W. Wagner thinks when Elsbeth first shows up to oversee his boys in blue and what Carra Patterson’s cop Kaya Blanke first has to see past once she starts working alongside Elsbeth in the various cases that fall on their laps.

Perhaps, like many of those New Yorkers who first encounter Ms Tascioni, you may be inclined to casually dismiss her as too flighty and frivolous. But keep watching—the show but also Preston’s masterful performance—and you’ll find a comfort watch the likes of which they don’t make that often anymore. Now let’s just hope the show, a rainy-day binge if there ever was one, gets renewed for plenty more seasons.

Elsbeth premieres February 29 on CBS